Botbuilder-js: DialogContextError: DialogStateManager.getValue: a scope of 'json' wasn't found

[zachgoz]

Describe the bug

After installing the custom js runtime I am seeing this errors after making a HTTP request. The initial error is:

value:"DialogContextError: DialogStateManager.getValue: a scope of 'json' wasn't found."
if I change the response type to blank then I see:
DialogContextError: args[0].trim is not a function

Version

Bot Framework Composer

Version: 1.4.1
Electron: 8.2.4
Chrome: 80.0.3987.165
NodeJS: 12.13.0
V8: 8.0.426.27-electron.0

Browser

• [x] Electron distribution
• [ ] Chrome
• [ ] Safari
• [ ] Firefox
• [ ] Edge

OS

• [ x] macOS
• [ ] Windows
• [ ] Ubuntu

To Reproduce

Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Add JS runtime
2. Make HTTP request in a dialog

Expected behavior

The HTTP request is successful and the response is saved to a variable

Screenshots

Additional context

This was working fine before adding the custom runtime.

[zachgoz]

It appears this is only an issue with the Node JS runtime. When I build composer from the source and run the latest version I have an option to convert to a composer 2.0 project. If I do this and use the NodeJS runtime I see these errors, if I use the C# runtime the dialog works as expected.

[ninggao]

@anusharavindrar Could you please take a look at this one?

[zachgoz]

Is there any other info I could provide to help solve this?

[jwiley84]

I am unable to repro this using the electron version. I will try the source version and see if it repros there.

[zachgoz]

This seems to be an issue for any nodejs runtime, I've tried node 12.20 and 14.17 both fresh installs of composer and existing and new composer projects have the same errors. Is the node runtime not supported anymore?

[ninggao]

@jwiley84 Any updates on this one?

[jwiley84]

I am unable to repro this on the source version. I'm going to ask a member of the composer team to chime in.

[zachgoz]

Ok I made some progress here. So the first error "a scope of json wasn't found" does not show up when I do not set json as the response type in the nodejs runtime. In C this does not seem to matter.

This uncovered a previous issue where certain values that should have been objects were being returned as strings so I had to use the =json() function to convert them to objects I could access. It appears this is fixed in the latest release and leaving the =json() around a non string throws the args[0].trim error because the input is not a string.

It would be helpful if the =json() function would catch an error if a non-string is passed to it. Or maybe it would be better to just process it instead:

(typeof args[0] === 'string') ? JSON.parse(args[0].trim()) : args[0]

[johnataylor]

@joshgummersall can you take a look? thanks

[joshgummersall]

Yep - I can repro, so something wonky is going on.

EDIT: Couple of issues here.

• The HttpRequest type defines an enum of valid response types where Json is one of these
• When you select "json" in Composer, it is serialized as json instead of Json
• If an enum value is not found when doing a (case sensitive) key-value lookup, the code treats it as a memory lookup expression to be resolved at runtime
• This yields the error message above
• .NET tends to do several things in a case insensitive manner which is likely why this is only affecting JS

There are two potential solutions - the first would be making the enum lookup case insensitive, while the other would be to ensure Composer serializes enums using the proper keys.

@zachgoz, for now you can edit your dialog by clicking "Show code", and then change the response type to "Json" like so:

[joshgummersall]

@zachgoz, we are still working on a resolution for this. Did the temporary fix above solve the problem for now?

[zachgoz]

Yes, thank you for the suggestion and update. This workaround got it working for me.

[joshgummersall]

We are fixing this at the SDK level as well, so when that updates it'll be fully resolved. Thanks for reporting the issue!